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Nov 27, 2016

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty (2016)

The Body announced that this would be their pop album and they absolutely were not kidding! Like a productive rapper, each of the band's output is to a large extent determined by whoever they've collaborated with in bringing it about, and whereas their (very good) collaboration with Full of Hell this year had The Body playing 'weird' as a foil, No One Deserves Happiness shifts the focus of their electronics from doomy atmospherics (e.g. handled by The Haxan Cloak) to dorky weird preset keys and sound effects, handled by I'm not sure who, maybe the band themselves. It's full of beats and jarring keyboards, and even reminds of The Ark Work in places for its glaring lack of interest in subsuming bedroom midi bits into a serious metal sound-world, but goes the extra step (forward or backward? I still can't tell) of still containing those serious metal sounds, and in The Body's case, arty excursions and weird collages to go with their very very (very) real fear of being human.

Thinking about Tim Hecker, Andy Stott, and Klara Lewis' 2016 albums there seems to be a trend in electronic music towards untreated sounds and textures (following from 2013's R Plus Seven and Yeezus), even within 'dark' electronics (where the sources have traditionally gone invisible). The Body noticed and consequently No One Deserves Happiness is as bizarre, 'contemporary', and bring the noise spontaneous as one could ever desire.